Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey (pictured, center) said authorities are awaiting DNA testing to confirm the girl is the child of Stinnett, 23, who was found slain in her northwest Missouri home Thursday afternoon by her own mother.

This book represents the best book value I've gotten all year. The book weighs in at 605 pages. I paid $.33 for it at Hooked on Books. That amounts to 18 pages per penny, friends, and you won't find dime detective fiction any cheaper.

The book collects a number of short stories from the 1930s and 1940s from the pulp detective fiction. The authors include Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Erle Stanley Gardner, Paul Cain, and Robert Leslie Bellem (as well as Robert Bloch, Fritz Lieber and others). The language? Oh, yeah:

I grabbed her gently, but firmly; pulled her close to me. "No look, Frenchis, I like you, see? Your glims are like stars. Your stems belong behind footlights."

Poetry.

Unfortunately, as with any book of this size, the authors feel the need to include stories that wander into the fantastic, including two Depression-era Robin Hoodesque superheroes, some Scooby-Dooish pseudo-supernatural thrillers, and a midget detective. Crikey, if I wanted to re-read The Defective Detective, I would have, or I would have gotten its sequel (if I could find it for three-for-a-buck).

Still, the book mixes the stories up, so when you read about a special mad scientist murder method in one story, you can rinse your mind out with some mindless two-fisted, slug-of-scotch action in the next.

The former Delta Airline stewardess who doesn't understand the nature of at-will employment laments her firing and chooses some questionable peers:

That was when I began to hear stories about people like Heather B. Armstrong, of dooce.com, who was fired because of her blog in 2002. Then there was "the Washingtonienne," who was fired earlier this year because of comments she entered in her blog.

One should not compare oneself to Jessica Cutler, as one always suffers by the mention.

Perhaps it's the end of the year and time to just dump old DOC files that I converted from WPS files which I converted from the original LotusWorks files I created in my prolific college period, but since I saw Edmund Spenser's "One day I wrote her name upon the strand" over at Pejmanesque, I thought it only fitting to present my responses:

One day I carved her name into a tree
with mine inside a Cupid-arrowed heart.
When I had closed my knife, she checked my art,
and shook her head, and then she looked at me.
"Now why'd you come and maim this oak?" asked she.
"Here in the woods, it lived its life apart,
but now the awful manly meddlings start.
This tree will never have its privacy."
"I maimed this oak so everyone could see
our names as linked for all Eternity,
and I must admit to you, my deified,
I like our love like this, objectified,
so that it's not another petty 'love',
but like a natural law passed from above."

This quiet spot, beneath this ancient oak,
is where I come to think on brooding days.
The open sky is blue and mocks the strays
that cower underneath the leafy cloak.
I sit and sip my slowly warming Coke,
and stumble through my memory, a maze
of many cul-de-sacs of yesterdays.
I remember how, beneath this tree, we spoke....
Above my head, carved by my careful hand,
the heart and letters of a "Brian and ...."
I remember once, the reckless words I said,
in love's embrace of sweetly muddled head.
With human eyes, a truth is now revealed:
That higher laws can also be repealed.

I wrote the following story 13 years ago, when I was young and in college. Forgive me my youthful exuberance, but since it's Christmas, I thought I'd post it since it contains a heartwarming message we can all share:

The Christmas Muzak was driving Ryan crazy. There are only
so many times you can hear "Good King Wenceslas" before you want to
strangle any available customer. And that limit had been passed twice over in
the seven hours that Ryan had been on duty.

The snow was not drifting lazily down as it would on an
ideal Christmas Eve. It was blizzarding, if there is any such verb. Two feet
had fallen in an hour, setting a record that will probably stand until the earth
passes through a major galactic dust cloud, or Brian Noggle gets a book
published, whichever happens first. Ryan shivered just looking at the two rows
of carts inside the store, hoping the supply would not diminish to the point
when he would have to go out in THAT.

An eskimo came through the electric doors. White snow clung
to his parka up to his shoulders. Gloves lowered the hood, removed two woolen
hats, a Sphericky's cap, and a set of earmuffs. It wasn't actually an eskimo,
Ryan discovered, but "Plaid" Jackson, a delivery man. He must have
the last load of cranberries for the season, thought Ryan. But who was going
to come in at ten o'clock on a night like this to buy cranberries?

"Is the snow deep and crisp and even?" Ryan asked
of the trucker.

"Huh?" replied Plaid. He paused to mull over the
question and then the answer. Ryan looked at the clock hung high on the wall
over the Deli department. He was supposed to get off at eleven, and the
question had eight words in it. Plaid wouldn't have an answer by then. And
'even' had two syllables. Drat, thought Ryan.

"Hey, Ryan, could you get the trash out of here?"
asked Ed, the store's night manager. 'Here' referred to the small elevated
office. It was surrounded by a four foot high wall topped by a foot and a half
of bulletproof glass. Once again Ryan paused to consider the necessity of the
glass, as any stick-up man over four foot tall could point the gun over the
glass and kill anyone in the office anyway. Never question, he reminded
himself.

"Yeah," Ryan responded, demonstrating the
eloquence he had picked up at his year at the local Jesuit-run university's
oratorical classes.

He entered the ultra-secure sanctuary of management and
looked at the pile of garbage. It had not been emptied all day and looked like
a horn of plenty of cigarette cartons and losing lottery tickets. He sighed
and began to redistribute the trash into trash bags.

Ed noticed Plaid and walked over to him. "Do you have
a load for us?" he asked, slowly, of the driver. The piped-in Muzak
started on the forty-second rendition of "The Wassail Song".

Ryan looked around furtively. Ed was outside the office
proper, and the only other person in it was a checker currently bent over a
calculator. She was obviously performing some function above the brain
capacity of a utility clerk. The Muzak control panel was right above him. He
grinned and hit a button. The Muzak stopped abruptly, replaced by the clicking
of the calculator's printer, as reproduced by the store's intercom.

Ryan lifted the three bags of refuse and exited the office.
Ed was waiting expectantly by Plaid. "Fill the milk shelves while you're
back there," Ed called. Karen stood alone in her checkout lane and
watched the cart. Ryan through the garbage in a cart and started wheeling it
toward the back door. Plaid said, "Yeah." Ryan wondered if he had
gone to the same college.

Far off in the back, the door to the back room by the dairy
department squeaked. Ed stepped into the office, leaving the door open behind him.
Plaid went back to his truck parked behind the store. Outside the front
windows, a van attempted to squeal to a stop, but slid past the windows and out
of sight. A few seconds later, the van reappeared, traveling in reverse, and
halted. Twelve armed terrorists leaped from the back of the truck and entered
the store. The last one to enter shut off the electric eyes for the doors.
The leader pushed into the office.

"What do you want?" asked Ed.

"The code for the safe," said the terrorist,
brandishing a big automatic pistol. To Ed it appeared to be a VERY big
automatic pistol, but it really was just a big automatic pistol.

"Who else is here?" asked another terrorist,
speaking to Karen. Eleven automatic rifles caused her a bit of fright and she
was unable to answer.

The checker in the office looked up from her calculator only
to faint when confronted with the appearance of the evil-doers. She
subsequently hit the floor with a thud.

Ten automatic rifles unpointed themselves at Karen and
fanned out to search the store.

"I don't have the code. I'm just the night
manager," said Ed calmly. He had dealt with ten-year-olds shoplifting
candy bars. Be calm, yet firm, and intimidating. How different could this be?
he wondered.

"Give it to me or I will have to shoot you,"
threatened the bad guy. He cocked the big automatic pistol.

Too firm, thought Ed. Or so he started to, but the thought
was never completed because his brains most uncooly splattered against the
cigarette racks on the wall.

"How about some music?" asked the leader, and he
turned the switch on the nearby control panel from intercom to Muzak. Then he started
humming "Jingle Bell Rock".

Ryan was standing with a crate hook in one hand and his jaw
open. The whole exchange was coming through loud and clear over the intercom.
He was now watching through the window in the dairy door. The office and therefore
the entire scene was being played out at the other end of aisle eight from
where he stood.

"Ok," said the unfamiliar voice, and Ed's pretty
much headless corpse staggered backwards.

"Great. I'm going to have to clean that up,"
muttered Ryan. His musings were interrupted by the appearance of a machine gun
bearing hoodlum in the same window. Ryan quickly stepped behind a convenient
corner. The gunman walked past, and Ryan extended the hook before the
advancing feet and pulled. The gunman fell backwards. "Mama mia!"
he exclaimed as his head crunched on the concrete floor.

"Good. No mess," said Ryan. He picked up the bad
guy's weapon and Official GI Joe Walkie-Talkie.

"Did you hear something over there?" whispered a
voice on the radio.

"Luigi? Luigi?" asked a frantic voice.

"Did you see where he was going?" asked another.

"Over by the dairy section," said another voice.
How many was that? wondered Ryan.

"The safe is protected by three super-duper
locks," said the geekiest looking terrorist. "There is one
combination lock, one laser intensified multiple pin steel lock, and the code
key. Unless we break them all, we can't get it open," he continued. He
set up a U.S. Army Special Piercing Laser for Military Use Only, available at
any surplus store or local K-Mart for $19.95, and its red beam began to work on
the safe.

One of the terrorists kicked the dairy door, and then he
kicked it again. On the third kick, the door opened with a squeak, and three
automatics pointed into the dairy back room. Leaning against a pile of trash
against the back door was Luigi. A sign saying "SALE! Nyuck nyuck nyuck,
now I have a gun," was taped to his chest. The first man to reach him,
and fortunately not the brightest, read the fine print on the sign --
"Look behind you!" Being a crack commando sort of guy, this
terrorist crouched, spun, and fired, mortally wounding his two companions.

"Gosh, sorry," he said to the cadavers.
"He's a tricky one, eh?"

A large Italian-looking terrorist tried to pick up a cash
register and dash it to the floor in rage, but found the object too heavy to
lift. He grunted and set his gun on the floor. Then, with both hands, he
tried to heave the register. He grunted and strained until a sweat broke out
on his forehead. He strained some more, took off his jacket, and strained even
more. After ten minutes, he gave up and settled for knocking a candy rack
over, spilling candy bars and bubble gum to the floor with passion.

"Mario's pretty hacked off," said one terrorist.

"The guy in back killed his brother," replied
another.

"I want this guy dead," said the lead terrorist
into his walkie-talkie. "How's it going?" he asked of the geeky
terrorist.

"The combination lock is gone, and I'm working on the
laser lock, but without the code key...."

"Find the key," growled the leader.

The checker in the office gained consciousness, saw Ed, and
fainted again.

"Hello Mr. Rogue Good Guy. Do you think of yourself as
some big screen star of an action flick? Chuck Norris? Sylvester
Stallone?" asked the voice of the guy who killed Ed over the
walkie-talkie.

"I was always partial to Leslie Nielson and 'Weird Al' Yankovic,"
replied Ryan. He lie on the crawlspace above the meat counter. It was
crisscrossed with two-by-fours, and a foot's worth of decorative ledge kept him
hidden from view.

"You can't win. There are too many of us," said
the leader.

Ryan tried to think of a defiant, witty, sarcastic, and/or
cynical wisecrack, but none was forthcoming. "Oh, yeah?" was all he
managed.

Ryan thought of his options. The snowfall had by now made
exit impossible. He hadn't been able to put out the trash a half hour ago, so
by now the snow must be six feet deep. No cops. No help. Just him and ten
terrorists. I'd better get overtime for this, he thought.

He cautiously peered over the edge. No terrorists were in
sight. He lowered himself down and ran in a crouch for the grocery room,
located twenty feet ahead of him in the back of the store. There came a shout
as he crossed the wide Produce Department aisle. An echoing sound of gunfire
reached his ears as the bullets zipped by. He threw himself through the
swinging double doors. Red splattered on his blue vest.

He looked at the red and staggered. He even felt shock
coming on until he realized that it was only the remnants of some deceased
tomatoes. Relieved by this discovery, he climbed atop the boxes of paper bags
and lie down on the large produce cooler.

Three terrorists burst through the double doors. They
spread out and searched for him. One climbed a flight of stairs to the
employees' lounge. The other two played hide and seek among the pallets of
merchandise. "Peek-a-boo!" said one, leaping from behind a pallet of
paper towels. His partner barely restrained himself from perforating the former.
They concluded their search, shrugged, and moved toward the produce cooler.
Ryan slid back from the edge and hoped he was invisible.

A burst of gunfire came from the lounge. A few seconds
later Ryan watched the third of the trio descend the stairs clutching a can of
Coke.

"Dang soda machine wouldn't take dimes," he
explained. Ryan nodded to himself, agreeing with the actions of the
terrorist. The heavy door to the produce cooler whooshed open. After a few
moments, the double doors on the other side of the cooler opened. Ryan turned
and watched on of the terrorists go through a side door into the Deli
Department and the other two go out the door leading to the produce aisle.

Ryan wiped a nonexistent bead of sweat from his forehead.

"I can't find the code key anywhere," said the
geek. The office was now in disarray. Cigarette cartons, books of computer
printouts, and other assorted papers littered the floor and almost buried the
checker. She opened her eyes, saw the mess, gasped, and fainted.

"In this safe is a stack of stamp books and over one
hundred thousand bonus stamps. With that haul, we would have enough full books
to get quite a few Musicfest tickets," said the leader, laughing heartily.

"You guys aren't terrorists. You're just
thieves," Karen said.

"We never said we were terrorists. It was the writer
of this story that first implied we were terrorists," corrected the
leader.

A lone THIEF exited the produce cooler below Ryan. As soon
as the door closed, Ryan pulled a rope that he had found atop the produce
cooler, and a hastily devised trap sprang shut. A stack of the paper bags fell
on the bad guy. Ryan slowly climbed down and examined the newly dead body.
There was a backpack with a Packers logo on it under a box of bags. Ryan
opened it and discovered a few bricks of C-4. He smiled. "It's about
time," he said with a mischievous and somewhat maniacal grin. He looked
around, gathered his rope, and said, "Let's get busy...."

Big Jim, the store's power fork, roared out of the double
doors of the grocery back room. Its handles was lashed into the "Forward,
Full Speed" setting. Two bad guys in the back row of the store looked in
surprise. A machine gun was also lashed on board at a level of about three
feet above the ground. As the machine plowed forward, the gun fired a
continuous stream of bullets toward the front of the store. One of the thieves
fired a few bullets at the fork as he and his companion began to run toward the
dairy. A scream issued from Aisle One as a bad guy received a helping of
bullets. Blood mixed with catsup on the floor, creating a gooey mess that Ryan
would probably have to clean up.

The two thieves trotting ahead of machine passed Aisle Eight
and turned the corner of the frozen aisle. The machine hit the corner where
the dairy cases meet the frozen cases, and the plastic used the occurrence as
an excuse to explode. Two horribly mangled corpses flew threw the air and
knocked over a Kool-Aid display in the center of the frozen aisle. Torrents of
milk, orange juice, and egg spilled onto the floor. Big Jim was now Hundred
Thousand Little Jims.

It didn't take long for three gun-toting crooks to figure
out where the power fork had emerged from. They charged through the door with
little regard for the possibility that there might be a utility clerk with an
automatic rifle waiting for them. There wasn't, though, because Ryan had
planned on the presence of brains in the criminals.

What the hoodlums did find was three cases of banana peels
on the floor. They danced a cartoonish jig as they tried to keep their
balance. They failed and fell to their backs. A snickering Ryan, after
leaning against the produce cooler door and enjoying the show, ended their
shame with a barrage of lead.

Ryan then entered the produce cooler and emerged in the
produce room. A vicious kick launched his gun into the air. It clattered onto
the crawlspace he had so recently occupied. The source was a big mad Italian
dude. Mario. He appeared a VERY big, VERY mad Italian dude to Ryan.

"You killed Luigi," Mario said.

"Er...sorry," said Ryan with a sheepish smile. He
figured the apology had been rejected when Mario hit him with a right hook to
the jaw. This was followed by a flurry of blows that made Ryan's face numb and
his head swim. Another kick and Ryan found himself knocked into the produce
cooler. He backed to the opposite door and grabbed whatever weapon was handy.
The weapon happened to be a case of eggs.

Mario let out a yell and entered the room with a flying
kick. Show off, thought Ryan. The first Sphericky Grade A Jumbo caught Mario
above the right eye, and the following eggs hit him in the chest and stomach.
Mario raised his hands to defend himself from the barrage as he moved closer to
Ryan. The U/C gave up his futile attack and turned to open the door, but was
stopped by a massive chop to the back of the neck.

Mario stood him up and spun him around. "Now you will
pay in full," Mario said with a horrible smirk. He raised his right fist
and Ryan felt the crosshairs on the bridge of his nose.

At that moment, over the speakers, began a familiar sequence
of musical notes. The Muzak had faded into the background with this new
repeated hard stimulus to Ryan's face, but there is only so much a man can take
before his hidden resources kick in. Only so much can a man take before the
hatred, rage, and pain set him off for good. And the ninety-seventh repetition
of "Good King Wenceslas" was too much for Ryan.

Ryan's eyes grew red and his fingers curled. They found the
neck of his adversary. "No, no more," said Ryan. He forced his
muscular opponent to the floor and kneeled on his chest. "NO MORE!"
he screamed, and he beat Mario's head against the floor with a passion. Mario
soon grew slack and the back of his head had the consistency of a bruised
McIntosh apple, but Ryan did not cease until the song was over. When it
finished, he stood up, straightened his blood-stained vest, and searched for
his gun. He found it and checked the clip. One bullet left.

"Where is the flamin' code key?" asked the
leader. The gunfire from the back had ceased a long time ago, and none of his
men had reappeared. He had never lost his composure before, but he was close
now.

"I don't know!" shouted the geek. He was
sweating. He too knew the score, and it was something like Rogue Dude With the
Gun 10, Them 0.

"Yeah, Ryan!" shouted Karen. "He's whipping
up on you guys."

The leader stepped out of the office and grabbed her arm.
"You know him?" he asked fiercely.

"Sure. He's a U/C here."

At that moment a rifle and blond head of hair appeared from
behind the register at Lane 8. "Freeze!" shouted Ryan, aiming the
rifle at the leader.

The leader pulled Karen between Ryan and himself. The
automatic appeared in his hand, and to Karen it looked like a VERY big
automatic. "Lay down your weapon and come here," said the leader,
"or she dies."

Drat, thought Ryan. The cute checker I'd most like to
impress with my brave heroics. "The big Italian dude's dead. So are the
rest," said Ryan, lying his rifle at the start of the conveyor belt of the
checkout counter.

"And you must die," said the leader, shoving Karen
away and aiming with both hands at Ryan. Ryan stomped his foot on the pedal
that activated the belt and snatched the automatic rifle. He pulled and held
the trigger, and shell after shell pounded into the body of the former leader.
After a few seconds he released the trigger.

That's odd, he thought, removing the clip. One bullet
remained. That's right, he thought, the hero never runs out of bullets.

The geeky bad guy watched the body of his boss slump to the
floor in the same manner as Ryan had an hour and a half ago. Newly promoted to
leadership of the band of hoods composed of himself, his first decision was
simple: retreat. He opened the door to the Manager's office and passed through
it to emerge in the frozen aisle. Ryan's shot crashed through a door in the
frozen case and killed a container of Cool Whip.

"The dairy back door!" shouted Ryan, and he took
off in a trot down aisle eight. The last thief spun the corner and headed into
the dairy back room. The next shot from Ryan, fired on the run, splooched into
a bowl of ricotta cheese.

Displaying athleticism uncommon to the ordinary
laser-operating nerd, the crook vaulted over three corpses, a pile of trash,
and hit the Emergency Door Unlock bar. The alarm began to whine as he pushed
into a seven foot wall of snow and into the night.

Ryan arrived at the back door. He could not see far into
the tunnel dug by the guy, but he fired blindly into it. He heard the roar of
a diesel engine, and a mountain of snow moved. There was a crashing sound and
then a grating sound. This grating continued for a few seconds, then there was
a lingering scream quite befitting a geeky criminal, and then silence.

Ryan pulled a nearby stepladder into the snow and climbed
it. As he poked his head out of the snow, he saw Plaid's truck had plowed into
the dumpster and shoved it ahead a few feet. He also traced the the collapsed
roof of the crook's tunnel and noted that it ended at the dumpster. As long as
they don't move the dumpster, I won't have to clean that one up, he thought.

The driver's side door of the truck opened.
"Yeah," said Plaid. "Deep and crisp and even. Ha. Say are you
gonna pull this load or what?"

"Where is the code key?" Karen asked Ryan as he
appeared at the front of the store, bleeding, torn, and fatigued. He hoped she
was impressed.

"You know Ed. He probably locked it in the safe,"
Ryan explained. He dropped the gun to the floor.

"You look pretty messed up," Karen said.
"Let me see if we can find some Band-Aids." She stepped into the
office, and Ryan followed, secretly happy. To him he felt secretly VERY
happy. He ignored Ed's corpse.

The checker on the floor came around again, and this time
she managed to stay conscious. "Ryan, get a broom and a mop and clean my
office," she murmured weakly.

St. Louis built a $260 million stadium to attract a football team. MasterCard got $41 million of tax incentives to build its technology center here. Ford got $17 million to keep its Hazelwood plant open.

Public officials justified each of those economic development deals as a legitimate investment that created and preserved jobs. But each also could be labeled corporate welfare.

Would we be better off if such subsidies were banned? It's an enticing thought to many taxpayers, and a chilling thought to politicians and corporate officials. But the debate has been largely theoretical until recently. Now, a court case in Ohio may make some tax incentives illegal.

He's a better gadfly than commander in chief, that's for sure.

The government has no business spending tax monies to either perpetrate itself or to aid corporations so that they might indirectly benefit citizens.

The IMG/Primus Worldstars tour of Europe was organized as a gesture of goodwill, but not all fans at their 5-4 win against the Russian Stars on Sunday felt the same.

A fan twice threw a banana on the ice when Worldstars forward Anson Carter was playing, once during the first period and again during the third. Carter, who is black, told ESPN The Magazine's EJ Hradek that he noticed the racist act but did not alert game officials.

A bit of perspective that people are thugs and punks everywhere, not just here in the United States where over 150 years ago, certain sections of the country practiced a barbarism.

That's the Wisconsin Department of Transportation spending the better part of a million dollars for a Web site explaining how they're going to rebuild a major interchange in downtown Milwaukee.

The contract, released last week to the Journal Sentinel, also includes $15,600 for 25 flights.

Where in Wisconsin do you need to fly at $624 a pop?

Meanwhile, the people sucking the government teat are pleased:

"We're damn proud of this Web site," said Brian Swenson, vice president of HNTB's Wisconsin operations. "I know we're taking a lot of heat and a lot of hits for it, but this tool is going to save people time and money when construction comes up here."

It's all about serving the public, ainna? At as high of a price possible from funds that the public cannot determine how to spend because it's been taken from them by their elected and appointed betters for distribution liberally to their unelected, unappointed, and no-bid betters.

You know, I really hate when advertisements in online papers require an additional download to view. For example, in the stories today on StL Today, the online arm (complete with swinging arm flab) of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an in-article advertisement needs a plug in and instead of displaying with all its clock-cycle-grabbing beauty, overlays the actual text in the story.

Here's a quick word to you online marketing types: I am not going to download a plugin to see advertising. What were you thinking? Pinheads.

A cataclysm 250 million years ago wiped out nearly all life in the Earth's oceans, and nearly three-quarters of the plants and animals on land vanished too. It was the greatest catastrophe the Earth has ever experienced - - but scientists who study such events are in sharp disagreement over what caused it.

Indeed, scientists in San Francisco are divided: Is it the Bush administration's environmental policies that rent the space-time continuum to cause a cataclysm in distant the past, or is it a Bush administration policy that has yet to pass? Can good scientists stop the evil Edward H. Haliburton III, who many people don't realize still plots maniacally in a lair in the Mojave Desert?

Hopefully, a burst of triumphant fanfare will arise from this Science League retreat to save the future and the past!.

After watching the movie Ocean's Twelve, do not attempt to compliment your wife or female significant other by telling her, "You've got more feminine hands than Catherine Zeta-Jones and are prettier than Julia Roberts," if she can quickly grasp the implications.

Gephardt, who turns 64 next month, showed up more than 90 percent of the time to vote in all but 7 of his 28 years in Congress.

Yeowtch. So for 75% of his career, he's been present 90% of the time to do his job. Although that's better than my scholastic career, it's nowhere near my professional behaviour.

The Riverfront Times goes on to enumerate some of the years where he's fallen short:

1987, where he made 18% of votes.

1988, where he made 80% of votes.

1996, where he made 88% of votes.

1997, where he made 87% of votes.

2003, where he made 9% of votes.

The RFT doesn't cover the last two years, but they don't have to. It serves to highlight that legislators, of both parties, not just Gephardt and the 2004 senatorial tandem that shamed their consituencies most publicly, receive hundred thousand dollar salaries and then don't bother to show up for work.

Imagine the jobs you've held, gentle reader, where you can take that six figure salary and only show up one day every two weeks. Or the one where you got four day weekends every weekend without working more than eight hours Monday through Thursday. Are you having trouble? So am I.

Of course, if you start to figure in vacation, you might have missed a couple of weeks of work. Certainly, this downs your percentage. But it shouldn't figure into a position, such as Congressional representative, where the employee has plenty of time to relax when Congress is not in session. Nor do Congressional missed votes come from sick days, for the most part. Instead, they come when the employee takes care of personal business--whether looking for another job or working deals with other employees regarding workload and credit for accomplishments.

No, our legislators have the best of government work. High salaries, long vacations, and less accountability than real people or even other government employees.

You know, much has been made about the discovery that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukrainian politician and soon-to-be president elect, has been disfigured by a large amount of dioxin introduced to his body. Most people suspect the Russians or political rivals, but I've used Occam's Cosmetological Scalpel to come to a different conclusion.

You know, perhaps he's studied American politics and has learned that certain American politicians have injected deadly poisons used as devices in 1970s and 1980s suspense novels and movies, such as botulism toxin, directly into their bodies in vain and, well, vain efforts to make themselves more appealing to the public.

Unfortunately, because the Ukraine is not Massachusetts or Beverly Hills, Yushchenko got the dioxin and not the botulism.

It's just a crackpot theory, so it might be wrong. But that's what they want you to think.